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Wednesday 4th<\/sup> October marked Devon and Cornwall Police\u2019s Plymouth Commander\u2019s Annual Award Ceremony, where police officers, and members of the public, were recognised for acts of bravery and contributions to the community.<\/p>\n One of these awards was made to Dr Alan Butler<\/a>, Research Fellow with the Plymouth University History Department.\u00a0 He was awarded the first Plymouth Community Award by Chief Superintendent Dave Thorne, the award was presented to him by the Police and Crime Commissioner Alison Hernandez.<\/p>\n In the presentation, Chief Superintendent Thorne, acknowledged Alan as a valued and respected member of the LGBT Community and drew particular attention to his work as one of the co-directors of Pride in Plymouth.<\/p>\n In 2011, Dr Butler launched the Plymouth LGBT Community Archive which discovered and documented undiscussed aspects of the history of Plymouth\u2019s LGBT Community.\u00a0 This went on to win the Most Inspirational Community Archive award the following year with the Community Archives and Heritage group.\u00a0 A committee that Alan now sits on to promote the importance of community archives both nationally and locally.<\/p>\n The Police Commander went on to acknowledge that Alan, and Pride in Plymouth, provide regular groups and meetings to provide a safe social space for the LGBT community. They also support many of the city\u2019s LGBT asylum seekers who are fleeing countries where being LGBT is illegal and, in twelve countries, attracts the death sentence. \u00a0The annual Plymouth Pride event itself provides one of these safe spaces and now includes a parade through the city of around 2500 people and the event itself welcomes in excess of 6000 visitors.<\/p>\n Police and Crime Commissioner Hernandez told the audience that \u201cAlan had volunteered hundreds, if not thousands of hours and Pride in Plymouth created spaces where people could be free to be themselves\u201d.\u00a0 In acknowledging this contribution she also presented him with an engraved crystal clock which, she joked, \u201cwent someway to acknowledging his commitment of time\u201d.<\/p>\n Commander Thorne also explained that Dr Butler is a valued independent advisor to the Devon and Cornwall Police and, in that role, he is consistently present at many meetings, all of which are conducted in his own time and helps to ensure that the voice of the Plymouth LGBT Community is heard at a senior level. He also advised that Alan supports the police in identifying ongoing issues within the city and also ensure vulnerable victims receive the high level of service they deserve.\u00a0 He added \u201cI would like to personally thank him for his huge ongoing contribution to our communities\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wednesday 4th October marked Devon and Cornwall Police\u2019s Plymouth Commander\u2019s Annual Award Ceremony, where police officers, and members of the public, were recognised for acts of bravery and contributions to the community. One of these awards was made to Dr Alan Butler, Research Fellow with the Plymouth University History Department.\u00a0 He was awarded the first… Continue reading Plymouth University Research Fellow Receives Plymouth Community Award<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":2564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,3],"tags":[246,444,800,247,683,819],"class_list":["post-2563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-histories-memory-memorialisation","category-news","tag-alan-butler","tag-award","tag-british-history","tag-lgbt","tag-lgbt-histories","tag-plymouth-pride","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2565,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563\/revisions\/2565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}